Week-37

Writing/Fiction 

Hi Faces of Silicon Valley-ians! Still trying to come up with a name for this reader-base! Drop any suggestions in the comments! But before I digress, welcome to the official month, where it's just summer! All day, all hours, all weeks, all month! And Happy Fourth of July, of course! 

After months of diving deep into STEM principles, engineering breakthroughs, and scientific concepts, Faces of Silicon Valley is returning to our creative roots, to have the summer take a slight creative turn to kick off the summer. Sometimes our brains need a breather, and what better way than storytelling? I'm smiling, just by writing this, writing for you guys, makes me so happy! 

Moreover, this season, you’ll see more fiction, reflection, and creative writing mixed in alongside our usual explorations. Think of it as a reset: same curiosity, but a different lens. Before we begin, a quick update from the community!

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This time it's short but #thankful/grateful! 

Every day, the number of readers and views I get on my blog posts make me so happy. We've grown so much, since last month we've gone from 154 community engagement/interactions to 205 on a monthly basis! I'll never forgot the all time record high when we got to 645! But that was when we were posting more often! Speaking of posts, now that it's summer be sure to check out the Community page, it's definitely had some construction done! It’s hard to advertise, but the fact that you’ve spent time reading and sharing this website through word of mouth makes me endlessly grateful. You can imagine the joy on my face when I opened my phone first thing, this morning and once again, smiled, as I read last month’s website report, in June, we were up 58% in readers and 78% in views!

Just remember: don’t be afraid to interact with the story. I love it when you share posts, and even more when I read respectful and thoughtful comments below. If you’re worried about revealing personal information, you can always click “post anonymous.” Another option is using the Contact page, where you’ll be in direct contact with me. Although my team is busy, we do our best to respond and make sure everyone feels heard.

I loved hearing from a few of you earlier this year and please keep sending your thoughts as we've now passed the official halfway mark of 2025! A thousand times grateful!!! 💛

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Introduction to this week's post! 

⚠️ Content Disclaimer:
The following piece is purely fictional. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental and not intended to portray any real individual.

This story is part of our summer shift into different venues, showcasing narratives that explore responsibility, family, and growing up too fast. After months of STEM-heavy content, this piece is a reminder that storytelling is also a way to understand the world.

Meet Esperanza. :-D

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Esperanza

Esperanza was my roommate this summer. She’s only a year older than me, but she always seemed older. Not in the way of wrinkles, but in the way she carried everything. Her family, her school, and her own world.

She lives in Los Angeles, not the parts with palm trees and clean streets but the kind with musky-gray peeling paint and the sound of blaring sirens. She showed me pictures of her house once.

“It’s small,” she said, “but I’m happy we have a roof.”

She shares it with her uncle, who she says “can be senseless because he doesn’t have a job.”

Her dad works at a factory far away and walks there every morning. Even though he comes when he can, Esperanza doesn’t always see him; he leaves before she wakes up and comes home late. Her mom sews tags on clothes in another factory. Esperanza says her mother’s fingers ache, but she never complains.

“You would think sewing tags is useless,” she told me one morning as she held up a pair of sleek raven-black cargo pants that had unique patterns of pink and purple carnations along with bluebirds stitched along the hem, “but my mom’s learned to make really cute clothing for us.”

Her brother and sister are older, but Esperanza cleans up, reminds them to study or help out, and keeps the house from falling apart. She’s the one who still goes to school before wiping down their round chocolate-oak table after heating up microwave dinners.

When she was little, she tried teaching her dad the alphabet after kindergarten, drawing a dog next to the letter D so he would remember. Now she does their taxes. I remember watching her one night, typing numbers into a form that looked like a foreign language.

She rides the subway to school and says you have to be careful there. She says it like it’s just a part of life. Somehow, she still has a 4.0 GPA, tutors, and as class president leads her class. She laughs a lot, but I can see she’s more tired than she reveals. I think responsibility found her before childhood did.

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Comment Prompt! 

• What line or moment from this story stayed with you the most?

• How do you interpret Esperanza’s sense of responsibility? Admirable, unfair, or both or something else?

• Do you enjoy seeing more fictional and reflective writing on Faces of Silicon Valley?

• What kinds of stories should we explore more this summer?

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See you soon!